The blue sky outside the shuttle began to darken. “How does the shuttle fly? Is this thing using what the movies call antigravity?” He heard himself say this, and wondered what 'movies' could be. Obviously the shuttle used swizzles.
His “father” laughed. “I couldn't begin to tell you. The scientists hate that word. They say it can't be done. But it must be something like that...because here we are.”
The sky had gone black. Black with white pinpoints that he realized with a shiver must be stars. “We're out in space already?”
“Yes, it shocked me too, the first time. Their shuttles have been tracked moving at over Mach 20, faster than our scramjets. I can't imagine how they do it in atmosphere. It's as if they have ways of making the air get out of the way. I mean, it's not even streamlined!”
He frowned. “But I felt no acceleration.”
His “father” just shook his head. “Son, they are a million years ahead of us. Maybe more. They're an old species and I get the feeling that they're amused by our attempts to understand their technology. As far as we're concerned it's magic. Imagine trying to explain molecular sieves and spintronic processors to someone from ancient Sumeria. That's what it's like.”
A strange light seemed to enter his “father's” eyes. “But someday...someday we'll be like them. Someday we will be wizards with our own magic technology, traveling between the stars.”
“In a million years?”
“Maybe not so long as that, now that we've got them to help us.”
“Maybe. But how long are they staying?”
His “father” pursed his lips. “Good question. It's been five years now and they don't show any signs of getting impatient. Looks like they are determined to get a complete catalog of Earth's genomes before they leave, and they're willing to wait as long as it takes.”
“Sounds like they aren't coming back.”
“Well, at the rate the DNA collection is going, they could be here for decades. I don't mind saying I'm in no hurry to see them go. Those Gifts of theirs are changing the world, son.”
“So you keep saying. Wouldn't it be better if we changed our world by ourselves?"
“We were...and not in a good way. By the time the diehards were willing to admit Antarctica was melting, the sea level had already risen eleven inches.”
In the dream, he rolled his eyes. “What's that got to do with aliens dropping by with presents?”
“You'll understand better later I guess. For now, what you need to know is the Gifts they're giving us are game-changers. We can do so much more with so much less, it's like magic. The swizzles alone are transforming desert into farmland. West Texas and the Sahara are already starting to bloom! Put a molecular sieve on the front of one of their swizzles and you have free desalinated water.”
He frowned. “Wouldn't the intakes get clogged with salt?”
“That's what I thought. But we found a way around that. We're making a world where no one will go hungry again.”
“There's more to life than just food.”
“You wouldn't say that if you were starving. But I know what you mean. Agriculture's just the beginning. One of the Gifts that we're calling the everflame gives us access to free energy, and it will really change things. No more fossil fuels! Which means that...there it is! Look!”
Ahead of them in the blackness something round gleamed. “It looks like a ring.”
“It is. A ring 100 miles in diameter. That's their ship”
Chapter 26
Feather: Running Away, Running Toward
“What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.”
– Blackfoot saying
Her moccasins slapped the ground as she ran as fast as she could down the path. Her lungs were starting to burn and she knew she couldn't keep this up much longer. The running was hard enough, but she had to keep changing direction because they were shooting at her.
Think, Feather! What would a hunter do? Not enough trees at this level to hide in. No weapons to fight with. Keep running you fool!
A crossbow bolt slammed into the ground a couple feet away. They were gaining on her! The path winding down the hillside was not going to save her.
One chance left. She ignored the path, turned left and dove forward, curling into a ball around the herb bag, and just let gravity do the rest.
She felt the impacts as her wound up body struck the ground and bounced like a fruit hurtling directly down the mountain instead of following the path. None of the chasers from above followed her trajectory. They weren't crazy enough.
She felt a crack! and a sharp pain in her side as she struck a boulder, then she sailed out over empty space and plummeted another fifty feet into a lake at the foot of the mountain.
The impact with the water knocked the wind out of her but she managed to keep her mouth shut, letting it escape in huge bubbles from her nose. Her side hurt worse now but there was no time to consider that. Clutching the bag with one hand she struggled to the shore.
If they had been smart enough to leave some men at the base of the mountain... But there was no one here. Evidently they had counted on the wizard shielding them from sight to give them an insurmountable advantage. Clambering up on the shore she gripped the bag to reassure herself that it still held the Healstone, and forced herself to run for the forest, ignoring the stabbing agony from her side.
Once she penetrated into the forest she turned south and headed for an old abandoned wolf den she remembered hiding in when she was a few summers younger, before the blood of the moon came to her. Crawling inside it, she pushed dry grass and weeds to the front to hide the entrance and lay there trying not to sob from the pain that cut into her side like a knife. Must have cracked a rib, maybe two, she thought, but although she wanted to cry the pain out she knew she couldn't, not now.
The bites of ants woke her. Did I manage to sleep? Darkness filled the den. I must have passed out for a few hours, she realized. But did that mean they were gone? No way of telling.
She felt her side and winced. The pain was still there, but not quite as sharp. Suddenly she felt like a fool and dug into the herb bag. She pulled out a mess of soggy herbs, useless, and them her hand came out holding the Healstone. Its faint green glow shed some light inside the darkness of the den, and she pressed it to her aching ribs.
Presently the pain faded away. She must be healing. No time for sleep. Traveling by night, she just might get away.
Chapter 27
Jeffrey: Unexpected Result
“Death is nothing; but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily”
– Napoléon Bonaparte
He yawned and put down the quill. At first the novelty of trying to identify and catalog the artifacts in the old cellarium had seemed like a welcome break to the tedium of the monastery, but in the end it had become only a different kind of tedium.
He had half a mind to tell brother Marcus that he was useless at this. How am I supposed to figure out what these damned things do? But then, was there anyone more qualified? It wasn't as if anyone had a manual.
Take that bowl over there. It looked like brass, and if you held it in your cupped hands for a minute a brass ball at the bottom would begin rolling around and around in the bowl. Well what was that good for? Another bowl, a wooden one, held small metal spheres. He wasn't sure what kind of metal they were made of, but they gave off a faint blue glow and apart from that, did nothing. What were they supposed to be, some kind of alien night light?
Shelves at one end of the cellarium held identified artifacts: everflames, swizzles, and several everwheels that were too small to be of much use to anyone, unless they were for some kind of child's toy. The rest of the room held tables piled with unidentified artifacts: rods, cones, strangely-curved bowls of rusty iron, things that looked like crumpled wads of thin metal sheeting, flat rectangular slabs of
what looked like gold and silver, like supplies from a goldsmith's shop, coils of metal like springs (except each end of the coil ended in a metal ball), metal hoops, and hexagons curved like shallow bowls.
The only thing the artifacts seemed to have in common with each other was they were all made of metal, as if some blacksmith had been bored or crazy and had decided to do the blacksmith equivalent of doodling. Obviously they must be Gifts, but most of them didn't look like any Gifts he had ever heard of.
He'd settled into a routine. Every morning he came down here and fiddled with the bizarre metal doodles, stroking them, twisting them, squeezing them trying to elicit some response to see what they did. By the time Marcus brought him lunch he was ready to scream. He'd eat lunch with Marcus, who brought him tidbits of news from Texas, and after lunch he'd go back to his cell and sit in the little back garden for a bit or do some weeding. Some afternoons he napped. Other times he tried to write letters to Aria or do sword drill with a wooden pole Marcus had found for him that was about the right length.
He'd made few discoveries. That is, he'd gotten a few of the mysterious objects to do things, but the results didn't seem all that useful. One of these discoveries was the brass bowl with the ball that rolled around. One day he'd held it long enough to activate it, but although he supposed it might be fun to watch when a person was bored, it seemed pretty useless. Was it some kind of alien toy?
He'd got so bored doing this that one day he borrowed a hammer and some nails and pounded a row of them into the wall to hang the little everwheels on. That way he could stroke them into moving without having to chase after them when they ran off the edge of a table. They turned at different speeds. He toyed with the idea of making some kind of clock from them.
Sometimes his lack of progress made him want to just scream. Was he doing something wrong, or were most of these things just inert, their magic faded?
“No,” Marcus had assured him. “They do something. I can feel a difference near them, but it's just not definable, sort of a rippling or folding in the space near them. Whatever they were made to do, they can still do it, at least faintly.”
Jeffrey wasn't so sure. Is this just make-work to keep me busy while the Church negotiates some kind of deal with the junta? Are they hoping to get something they want in return for handing me over, and are just still haggling?
Still, they could have locked him in his cell, except that the cells of these monks had no locks. But surely they could have just thrown him in a room that did lock, if they were going to turn him over. So what were they planning? He never for a moment considered the possibility that they had no plans at all.
I could just walk out of here. He wasn't under guard. He could slip out while they were dining or sleeping and they'd never know it until the morning when they brought him breakfast.
There were two problems with this idea. One was that he had no idea where this place was, other than that east of Dallas. The other problem? He had no clue what to do once he left. The junta still searched for him (according to Marcus) and there were no obvious allies nearby.
He wondered how the people in Denver were doing. That called to mind the time Xander's apprentice Lester had spent in the prison in Dallas. Lester had made good use of his time in his cell, making a swizzle and learning whatever he'd used to burst out through the roof and escape with his mentor. But then, he had the talent. Must have, or Xander would never have chosen him. Whereas he, Jeffrey, was nothing but a deposed heir hiding from the hunters. Useless without an army to back him in his bid to reclaim the throne.
He thought of Aria. Had she forgotten their engagement, now that he had no power? Perhaps Kristana had already made arrangements to marry her off to cement some other alliance.
There'd been no reply to the letters he'd handed to Marcus to send off to her. Not that he'd expected any, given the hazards of the journey between here (wherever here was) and Rado. A fast horse could probably get there in a matter of days, except that you couldn't gallop all the way, and anyway you'd need a change of mounts en route even if you stuck to a trot or a canter.
And all this time his father lay dead in a tomb of ice and metal, in the tank frozen in Xander's trap. He supposed the spell the old wizard had woven would keep the ice from melting, so technically his father's body wasn't rotting, at least. But still, his mother was left with a dead husband and a missing son. He supposed they had seized the mansion by the lake by now and driven her out to some humbler abode. Marcus had advised against trying to contact her.
Meanwhile, here he was, useless to everyone! He slammed his fist on the top of the table in front of him, making several of the metal doodads clatter and jingle. One of the spring-shaped ones rolled off the edge of the table and bounced off toward a corner of the room. Sighing, he pushed out of the chair and bent over to retrieve it. When he straightened, he looked at the row of little everwheels on their nail axles. They had rubber rims, mostly worn away over the years, and sometimes he just ran his hands over them to make them spin for a few seconds. That was how he'd learned how to turn them on and off, one day, when he hadn't reached out far enough and his fingers traced a circle around the metal disk.
He imagined doing that again, thinking of the clock he'd thought of fashioning. Some of them were quite slow when activated, like the one on the left end of the row. For all he knew, it might take an entire minute to revolve. If he painted a second hand on it, he could...
He froze. The disk was turning. But he hadn't touched it! He'd only imagined tracing a circle around the center hole. Awestruck, he imagined tracing around the center the other way.
The wheel slowed to a stop.
He had caused it to stop.
Chapter 28
Nathan: Performing An Experiment
“A wise man will hear and increase learning...”
– Proverbs 1:5
Someone was shaking his shoulder. Was it morning already? He groaned and tried to roll over and ignore whoever it was. But the shaking resumed.
“Wake up! I figured it out!” Kareef's voice.
He opened his eyes to the darkness of night and groaned again. “What? Is Texas invading?”
“No, I figured out the spheres!”
Huh? He reached out with his mind, lit the candle on the table with a deft pinch of tonespace, and yawned. “The spheres? What are you talking about?”
Kareef released Nathan's shoulder and reached under his pillow. His hand lifted one of the blueish metal spheres. “These.”
Nathan blinked and looked up from the sphere to see a wild light in Nathan's eyes. “Are you all right? You look funny.”
Kareef sat down on his own bed and regarded the sphere in his hand. “You'd look funny too if you'd just had the dream I had. I don't quite feel myself.” He laughed as if that was funny for some reason.
Nathan lifted an eyebrow and tried not to show his irritation. “You had a dream? Is that what this is all about? You figured out something from a dream? Go back to sleep and let me do the same. It's the middle of the night.”
Kareef froze. “Do the same? That's a great idea!” He reached over and shoved his sphere under Nathan's pillow.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
“Performing an experiment,” said Kareef. “Like the Ancient scientists used to do.”
“What?”
“If I'm wrong, if it was just me, nothing will happen. But if I'm right, you're in for a big surprise.”
Nathan shook his head. “Whatever you're talking about, can't it wait until morning?”
“Yes. Exactly. We'll wait until morning. Then either I'll apologize for waking you up, or you'll thank me for it.”
“Enough talk.” He reached out again and snuffed the candle out. He couldn't be sure, but he thought he saw Kareef grin, as the darkness closed in again.
Chapter 29
Xander: The Control Problem
“What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled w
orld a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?”
― Winston Churchill
“I thought I'd find you up here.” Kristana joined him at the railing looking out of the remains of Denver. There were quite a lot of remains, actually. Some of the ancient buildings had collapsed, and a few others had been demolished by the recent invasion of tanks from Texas with their high-explosive rounds, but much of the old city still stood. Most of it was dark, in the middle of the night, though a few windows here and there glowed with candle or torch light.
He slipped an arm around her as they stood there. “Having trouble sleeping?”
“Yes, a lot.” Her arm went around him too. “You'd know that...if you stopped avoiding my bedroom. Are you angry with me for something?”
He turned and took her in his arms and kissed her. “No, of course not. But I've been coughing a lot lately and I was afraid of passing whatever it is to you."
“Daniels told me about the coughing,” she said. “He's worried about you.. Says you've been avoiding him, too.”
“Does he?” Xander bent his head down to kiss her neck. It was easy to forget it when she was ruling Rado, but the governor wasn't a tall woman. “I've been busy trying to help Kaleb – I mean Lobsang – prepare for his confrontation with the Queen of Angeles.”
“Hasn't he left yet?”
“He has. He should be almost halfway there by now. But I wish he had stayed longer. We might lose him, and every wizard is precious, especially this early in the Plan.”
“Halfway? Really?”
“He doesn't have to stop to water and rest horses, because he doesn't have any. His wagon wheels are turned by a spinspace weave, so he can roll all day.”
Tonespace: The Space of Energy (The Metaspace Chronicles Book 3) Page 11